ShelfLook
Tools About
Cover of A Darker Shade of Magic

How long does it take to read A Darker Shade of Magic?

V. E. Schwab

A Darker Shade of Magic by V. E. Schwab takes about 7 hours 20 minutes to read at 250 words a minute.

Book 1 of Shades of Magic

Next: A Gathering of Shadows

About 7 hours 20 minutes

A weekend read

First published 2015. 400 pages, about 110,000 words.

15 days at 30 minutes a day

Estimate based on 275 words per page.

At other speeds

Slow, 150 words a minute 12 hours 13 minutes
Average, 250 words a minute 7 hours 20 minutes
Fast, 400 words a minute 4 hours 35 minutes

The page count is the median across 17 editions, so your copy may differ. How we calculate.

About the book

STEP INTO A UNIVERSE OF DARING ADVENTURE, THRILLING POWER, AND MULTIPLE LONDONS. Kell is one of the last travelers--magicians with a rare, coveted ability to travel between parallel universes connected by one magic city. There's Grey London, dirty and boring, without any magic, and with one mad king--George III. Red London, where life and magic are revered--and where Kell was raised alongside Rhy Maresh, the roguish heir to a flourishing empire. White London--a place where people fight to control magic and the magic fights back, draining the city to its very bones. And once upon a time, there was Black London. But no one speaks of that now. Officially, Kell is the Red Traveler, ambassador of the Maresh Empire, carrying the monthly correspondences between the royals of each London. Unofficially, Kell is a smuggler, servicing people willing to pay for even the smallest glimpses of a world they'll never see. It's a defiant hobby with dangerous consequences, which Kell is now seeing firsthand. Fleeing into Grey London, Kell runs into Delilah Bard, a cutpurse with lofty aspirations. She first robs him, then saves him from a deadly enemy, and finally forces Kell to spirit her to another world for a proper adventure. Now perilous magic is afoot, and treachery lurks at every turn. To save all of the worlds, they'll first need to stay alive. This description comes from the publisher. A Darker Shade of Magic is the first book of the Shades of Magic trilogy.

Subjects: Quantum theory, Magic, FICTION / Fantasy / Historical, Fiction, Fiction, fantasy, general, London (England) - Fiction

More by V. E. Schwab

Books like this

Popular books of similar length